About SickKids

Dedicated exclusively to children and their families, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is one of the largest and most respected paediatric healthcare centres in the world.  As innovators in child health, we lead and partner to improve the health of children through the integration of healthcare, leading-edge research and education.  Our reputation would not have been built - nor could it be maintained - without the skills, knowledge and experience of the extraordinary people who come to work here every day.  SickKids is committed to ongoing learning and development, and features a caring and supportive work environment that combines exceptionally high standards of practice.

When you join SickKids, you become part of our community. We share a commitment and determination to fulfill our vision of Healthier Children. A Better World.

Don't miss out on the opportunity to work alongside the world's best in paediatric healthcare.

Position Description

Clinical Research Project Assistant

Employment Type: Part-time (10 hours/week), 9-12 month contract

About the Opportunity

We are seeking a motivated and detail-oriented Clinical Research Project Assistant to join an innovative research project focused on applying artificial intelligence (AI) to improve how information is extracted from clinical and research documents. The

Many valuable clinical and research documents contain information that is difficult to search and analyse, requiring time-consuming manual review. This project aims to develop an AI-enabled system that automatically identifies, extracts, validates, and organises key information to support research, planning, and reporting.

You will join a project with a working prototype already in place and have the opportunity to take ownership of an important component of the system while collaborating with researchers at the SickKids Research Institute, Child Health Evaluative Sciences (Dr. Sanjay Mahant) and the University of Toronto (Prof Nathan Taback).

Here's What You'll Get to Do

• Improve and expand an AI-powered document processing and information extraction pipeline.
• Build and maintain the connection between a Python application and a PostgreSQL database.
• Refine data models and AI prompts to improve the accuracy and completeness of extracted information.
• Enhance the system's ability to process documents with varying layouts and formatting.
• Design and conduct a formal evaluation of the system's performance.
• Create and curate manually reviewed reference datasets for benchmarking.
• Select appropriate evaluation metrics and prepare reports summarising system performance.
• Run large-scale document processing workflows using SickKids high-performance computing resources.
• Contribute to the preparation of a research methods manuscript describing the project.
• Collaborate closely with the project team by communicating progress, documenting technical decisions, and identifying opportunities for improvement.

Here's What You'll Need

Required Qualifications

• Currently enrolled in or recently completed an undergraduate or graduate degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Data Science, Health Informatics, Biomedical Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Strong programming skills in Python.
• Experience working with relational databases and organising structured data.
• Experience using Git for version control.
• Ability to understand, troubleshoot, and extend an existing codebase.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work independently, manage competing priorities, and meet project deadlines.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical collaborators.
• A commitment to understanding and aiding in the pursuit of equity, diversity and inclusion objectives

Assets:

Experience with one or more of the following is considered an asset but is not required:

• Large language models (LLMs)
• Structured information extraction
• PDF or document processing
• PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, or Pydantic
• High-performance computing environments
• Slurm workload manager
• Hugging Face Transformers
• vLLM
• GitHub workflows

We welcome applicants who have strong programming fundamentals and a demonstrated willingness to learn new technologies.

What You'll Gain:

• Hands-on experience developing and evaluating an applied AI system used in clinical research.
• The opportunity to own a meaningful project component from development through evaluation and deployment.
• Experience working with large-scale computing infrastructure at SickKids.
• Close collaboration with researchers at SickKids and the University of Toronto.
• Flexible working hours that can accommodate academic commitments.
• The opportunity to contribute to scholarly publications, including potential authorship on a research methods manuscript.
• Experience applying AI and software engineering principles to real-world health research challenges.

About You

The ideal candidate is an upper-year undergraduate or graduate student who is curious, dependable, and motivated to solve challenging technical problems. You enjoy learning new technologies, are comfortable working independently, and thrive in collaborative research environments. You have strong attention to detail and are excited by the opportunity to apply AI and software development skills to projects with meaningful impact in clinical research.

 

 

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Our Commitment to Diversity

SickKids is committed to championing equity, diversity and inclusion in all that we do, fostering an intentionally inclusive and culturally safe environment that reflects the diversity of the patients, families and communities we serve. Learn more about workplace inclusion.

Accessibility & Accommodation

If you require accommodation during the application process, please reach out to our aSKHR team.  SickKids can provide access and inclusion supports to eligible candidates to support their full engagement during the interview and selection process as well as to ensure candidates are able to perform their duties once successfully hired.  If you are invited for an interview and require accommodation, please let us know at the time of your invitation to interview. Information received related to access, inclusion or accommodation will be addressed confidentially.

How To Apply

Technical difficulties? Email ***@sickkids.ca 🔒 Premium with a short description of the issues you are experiencing. We will not accept resumes sent to this inbox but we are happy to respond to requests for technical assistance.

Tip: Combine your cover letter and resume into ONE document of 20 pages or less as you cannot upload multiple documents as part of your application.

Every application is reviewed by a human recruiter and all hiring decisions are made by people. In some cases, AI-assisted tools are used to help review applications based on job-related qualifications.

All positions posted on the SickKids Hospital's Careers Site represent current vacancies, unless otherwise posted in the job description.